Saturday, December 16, 2017

We are just back from a very productive AthensCon. This third edition of the yearly convention welcomed no less than 17,000 visitors and fans over two days. The event is growing year on year and is fast becoming a reference within the comics, games, movies and collectibles industry.

AthensCon Day 1

AthensCon is a hub of creative talent, starting with the Special Guests
themselves, from comic writers and fantasy illustrators to action movie actors and cosplay artists from Europe and the US, with connections to Marvel, DC Comics and Disney, no less.

Rob and part of the AthensCon crew. (L-R: Khaled, RJK, Costas and Marios)

As a Special Guest, Rob ran a two-hour workshop, The Genius of Original Dungeons & Dragons:Leaping Outside the Box of Design History. He also participated in a Q&A session on RPG and D&D, and DMed two sessions of his redesigned Lake Level from Castle El Raja Key, featuring surprising encounters of the aquatic kind which certainly sent the players' imagination into overdrive!

Captive audience at the workshop

Rob took the pulse of the thriving Greek RPG market. He met up with his fans for autographs and a chat and was bowled over at how passionate and enthusiastic those guys and gals are!

Q&A session

This year is ending on a high note for Rob as when in Athens he made some interesting contacts with industry people and got some new project ideas rolling.

Let's roll some dice!

The history-laden, mythology-steeped antique city of Athens lends mystique to the convention itself and to the extra two days of hospitality provided by the organisers to their Guests. Thus special thanks to Andreas, Yiannis, Costas, Vera, Marios and the rest of the team who made us all feel at home amongst friends, and treated us to the warm Greek hospitality: the culinary delights of taverna fayre, and the historical delights of the unmissable Acropolis - birthplace of democracy and the precepts of Western civilisation - which gracefully dominates the Athenian cityscape. Not to mention its dedicated Acropolis Museum, and other places of interest (ex: National Archeological Museum) which stretch timelines out into millennia as they whisk us onto a fantastic odyssey peppered with Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes... from Greek mythology!

AthensCon was for us a very successful event. Thanks again to our hosts for the invite, and we look forward to meeting up again!

Thursday, November 2, 2017

I am a special guest for AthensCon, December 2 & 3, a convention which last year had 15,000 attendees. My duties/events include (besides having fun and eating gyros):

Running a two-hour RPG workshop: The Genius of Original Dungeons & Dragons:Leaping Outside the Box of Design History.

Participating in a large panel discussion on board game design.

DMing two sessions of my redesigned Lake Level from Castle El Raja Key, a level Gary Gygax cut his teeth on during the play-tests of D&D in 1973 and which was later incorporated into Castle Greyhawk as the "Black Reservoir." I have greatly expanded it to two maps with the commensurate encounters and added a back history and living depth to it. Should be a riot!

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Today archeologists from the Smithownisan Institute of Japan unearthed what is thought to be the last vestiges of a long defunct U.S. political party once called the Democrats.

Dr. Kumwatmae expounded upon the find: "It's an exciting artifact that we are studying around the clock. We believe these Democrats, in their dying days, resorted to baby worship by sacrificing millions of them upon the altar of a mysterious pseudo-religion that we can only now identify as something having to do with 'Planning'. We strongly believe that this symbol may very well be a link to that religion, although my colleague at the dig, Dr. Cumwatmyte, still insists that the representative image is more likely an expression of some hidden angst that was on the rise among their kind and that lead to their untimely demise about 250 years ago."